Jack O’Connell, still only 34, has already been on our screens for a couple of decades. Born in Derby in 1990, he had a troubled youth, in and out of court on minor charges, leaving school with scant qualifications and hopes of either becoming a footballer or joining the army.
Instead, he rapidly found fame and acclaim playing mostly delinquent roles on the small and big screen, breaking through in Shane Meadows’ 2006 film This Is England, and consolidating that with a leading role on Skins.
He rapidly made his mark in movies – Michael Caine yelling: “Star of the future!” at him on the set of Harry Brown. He was memorable in the 2008 horror Eden Lake, played Bobby Charlton in the BBC’s drama about the Munich air crash, and then won the attention of international critics for his work on Starred Up, as a young offender sent to the same prison as his father, and ’71, Yann Demange’s Troubles set thriller about a soldier on the run.
O’Connell’s most high-profile mentor was an unlikely one: Angelina Jolie, who cast him as the lead in Unbroken, her drama about the runner Louis Zamperini, who survived a plane crash in the second world war before being held captive by the Japanese for two years.
The actor once recalled that Jolie chartered a helicopter to fly him back for a pub dinner with his family in Derby. “My nan was the coolest of us all though,” he said. “She was like: ‘All right, Angie?’ At dinner, she took it upon herself to stand up and say a few words.
“It’s a testament to that wartime generation. She was so articulate. She really made a mark on Angelina. For all I know they’re still in touch.”
O’Connell also featured in Zack Snyder’s 300: Rise of An Empire, played Amy Winehouse’s husband Blake Fielder-Civil in the biopic Back to Black and most recently starred as Paddy Mayne in acclaimed TV show SAS Rogue Heroes. Later this year he’ll be seen in Danny Boyle’s zombie-sequel 28 Years Later, but before that he’s opposite Michael B Jordan in supernatural horror Sinners, out on 18 April.
Please send us your questions for O’Connell by 6pm BST on 31 March; we’ll print his answers in Film & Music on 11 April.
